In 2004, Jobs underwent a complicated but successful surgery to remove a tumor in his pancreas, and was back at work within a few months. While the procedure is highly successful for the form of pancreatic cancer that Jobs had, it also removes much of the pancreas and some of the digestive tract. This can lead to further complications, such as the dramatic and visible weight loss Jobs' suffered in 2008.

Jobs' last medical leave happened right before Apple's last Macworld attendance in 2009. This latest absence comes just as Apple is about to launch the iPhone on Verizon in the US and is expected to announce new products, including a new iPad, in the coming months.

During the previous two medical absences, Jobs left the day-to-day operations of Apple to COO Tim Cook. Since then, Cook has taken on more responsibilities that were once under Jobs' exclusive purview, and Cook is once again taking over while Jobs is away.

Here's the text of the e-mail Jobs sent to Apple's staff:

At my request, the board of directors has granted me a medical leave of absence so I can focus on my health. I will continue as CEO and be involved in major strategic decisions for the company.

I have asked Tim Cook to be responsible for all of Apple’s day to day operations. I have great confidence that Tim and the rest of the executive management team will do a terrific job executing the exciting plans we have in place for 2011.

I love Apple so much and hope to be back as soon as I can. In the meantime, my family and I would deeply appreciate respect for our privacy.

139 Reader Comments

I believe everything could go on quite well if Jobs retired and all else remained as it is. The challenge would be to maintain the present course in the absence of his influence. Not that he's responsible for everything, or some kind of deity... Just that while he's around, folks can go "what would steve do?" and actually get an answer. In the absence of that, we'll have people anointing themselves The Next Steve Jobs, trying to make a mark. It will be during that time that the future of Apple emerges.

Too bad, but not surprising. He hasn`t looked physically well for some time now, always very gaunt and frail looking to me, but a bout with pancreatic cancer and an illness that resulted in him getting a liver transplant is of course going to take it`s toll.

While the devices I own may not be Apple-branded, they're all influenced very much by Steve Jobs as he forces his competitors to step-up their game and produce quality products. Would Android or WP7 exist, at least in its current form had it not been for Steve Jobs and the IPhone?

Indeed.

If it hadn't been for the iPhone launching, then Android would probably have looked something like this:

maybe it's just the board of directors who poisoned his coffee... so now Apple will be able to pursuit different, more mainstream and developer friendly projects.

There's no intrinsic value in "developer-friendly" projects. Developers aren't a profit center. User-friendly projects are where Apple excels, and they are rightly willing to prioritize that over developer comforts.

mascarpone wrote:

Maybe to pursue more aggressively the market of mobile gaming, which is ignored by steve plans.

While Steve may not be a huge fan of gaming, perhaps he realizes that it is an ancillary market - an add on to intrinsic value rather than a prime motivator - and that in making iOS the best general-purpose mobile platform it can be (including jealously guarding battery life) Apple will naturally make it the most attractive mobile gaming platform.

Again, consumer-friendliness and -centrism over "developer" focus.

mascarpone wrote:

Will Steve's departure allow us to buy an iPhone / iPod touch with a dedicated gaming interface?

Buy a DSi, a 3DS or a PSP. A dedicated gaming interface is alienating to a vastly larger majority of potential consumers. It is this kind of navel-gazing myopia that makes Apple incredibly profitable, because Steve & co refuse to look at things strictly through the enthusiast's worldview.

If/when Mr. Jobs leaves Apple, the company's stock price will certainly lose a lot of its value because, like most everyone else, investors believe that much of the company's future earnings potential stems from his abilities as a leader.

I personally believe that Apple will continue to run with little visible change for probably 3+ years in the Post-Jobs Era. They surely have at least that well developed of a product pipeline (it could very easily be >5 years). I think whatever products they have in that timeframe are ready to stand on their own and just need to be finalized and developed. I see Mr. Jobs' role with the company as much more influential on the longer-term vision and development of the company. Apple doesn't need his help to build the next MacBook Pro, for example, but they do need his help to shape and create the next evolution of their offerings.

In that regard, his departure from Apple would really have a chilling effect on the future of consumer goods as a whole. I don't see how anyone else at that company (Mr. Cook included) could possibly be as creative, inventive, or visionary as Mr. Jobs. Likewise, none of his peers at Google, Microsoft, Sony, Motorola, etc. are doing much more than push the envelope as it exists now (Motorola Citrix & MS Kinect being the only exceptions).

If Mr. Jobs passed away tomorrow, I think all we'd have to look forward to would be the iPhone 5 and iPad 3 in the next couple of years. That and a torrential mountain of copypcat/reformulations from all of their competitors. Maybe they have a generational development for Apple TV in the pipeline too.

I personally have only 1 Apple product (iPod touch) but the mark they've made on the consumer electronics world is very obvious in my Google smartphone, my Sony laptop, and many of the other devices I use on a daily basis. Much respect to Mr. Jobs for all he's done. I hope he continues to beat the odds on his health.

I believe everything could go on quite well if Jobs retired and all else remained as it is.

The problem is is that as far as I've been lead to understand, the stock price (and the p-e ratio being what it is) is not based on what they're doing right now, but based on them hopefully inventing brand-new things in brand new categories and doing as well with those as they've done with the iPod, iPhone, iPad, iTMS, etc.

Their income and them being a huge multi-billion dollar company would go on quite well without Jobs, but without him, the fear might be that the brand new huge things that they haven't done yet won't appear, which'll make the stock price tumble so that it properly reflects a company that is doing really really well in existing categories, but won't be coming up with any new category-defining products any more.

Hope he gets better. I hate to see people suffer especially from the likes of cancer.

What is troubling to me, when I was watching the news this morning, is that some "Money" news anchor comes on and talks about how they are going to lose money because of it. Damn the guys health, who cares. Is is going to cost me some money? /sarcasm

What is wrong with some people nowadays?

If it's a financial news program, hell yeah the guy is supposed to talk about what's going to happen to Apple's stock, it's his goddamned job. If people didn't care about what was going to happen to Apple's finances because of this, then they'd watch another program.

I believe everything could go on quite well if Jobs retired and all else remained as it is.

The problem is is that as far as I've been lead to understand, the stock price (and the p-e ratio being what it is) is not based on what they're doing right now, but based on them hopefully inventing brand-new things in brand new categories and doing as well with those as they've done with the iPod, iPhone, iPad, iTMS, etc.

Their income and them being a huge multi-billion dollar company would go on quite well without Jobs, but without him, the fear might be that the brand new huge things that they haven't done yet won't appear, which'll make the stock price tumble so that it properly reflects a company that is doing really really well in existing categories, but won't be coming up with any new category-defining products any more.

Of course, I'm not a finance guy, so this all might be bollocks...

You're exactly right. Their stock price is very, very heavily influenced by what people believe their future performance looks like. Their P/E ratio being so high indicates that investors are betting heavily that the company will continue to improve its performance in the future. I think that if Mr. Jobs left, investors would lose confidence in the company's future earnings potential and the stock's P/E ratio would fall (by way of a falling stock price).

Weren't those same people at Apple before Jobs came back in the late 90's? I know some were if not all.

I still say 90% of apple's recent success is due to Jobs.

Absolutely not, all the current C-level staff was carefully brought together by Jobs in his, erm, "second coming".

Jobs is 100% responsible for creating the extremely successful Apple version 2. Wheter he's still crucial for this Apple's success, it's difficult to say.I'd say its ability to execute in the short and mid term should be completely not relying on Jobs anymore.Long term strategies, negotiating ability at the very top level, and that "sixth sense" for new products, who knows, we'll just need to sit and watch. I'd say that everything comes to an end eventually, even the infallibility of a top CEO instinct, so in the long term we would've had to sit and watch even if Jobs was in perfect health.

This is a good assessment. Apple is run very well and that won't change a bit. Cook is probably better at day to day operations anyway since he's an awesome logistics guy from everything I've read. No doubt Apple has a pretty good vision in place for the next 1 to 2 years, but what comes after this? While there are a lot of forward thinking guys in place it seems like one of Jobs best strengths is creating disruption in the right places to drive innovation within the company. I'm not sure anyone fits the bill for doing that besides Jobs (as it requires a certain amount of charisma, respectability, harsh directness, etc).

maybe it's just the board of directors who poisoned his coffee... so now Apple will be able to pursuit different, more mainstream and developer friendly projects.

Quote:

Maybe to pursue more aggressively the market of mobile gaming, which is ignored by steve plans.

Will Steve's departure allow us to buy an iPhone / iPod touch with a dedicated gaming interface?

Yes, I'm sure the Apple board of directors can't wait to get rid of Steve. "Our company (written off for dead 15 years ago) has the second-highest market cap in the world, is insanely profitable and keeps going from strength to strength? Bah! Who cares? The iPhone doesn't have a dedicated gaming interface!!"

Whatever it is you're smoking, you should tip your supplier. That's some good stuff.

Its hard not to associate Apple's rise with Steve Jobs. Regardless of whatever other causes, he is the face of Apple. Dangerous waters ahead for that company.

No one doubts this. The question is whether or not Jobs did a good enough job to instill his process and ethic in the company. Jobs is given all kinds of labels like "visionary", "forward thinking", etc but I would be willing to bet when you boil it down it all fits in a fairly direct process that he works by. We love to think of innovation as being akin to mana from god but that just isn't the case. My question is how much of the process that drives Apples innovation is due to is clout and charisma of Jobs? Have any steps been taken to ensure that the process is being driven by other key execs? WHo knows but I'm hopeful the last leave of absence drove apple to create the Steve way sans Steve.

aw I don't own a single apple branded item but that doesn't mean I want them to fail. They're good at making lifestyle devices and making other people step up their game. I *like* that even if I think Apple tends to overcharge somewhat.

As of right now (11.10 Central) Apple stock is actually up almost $3 per share - despite the news of Mr Jobs leave of absence being public for three hours or more. So, obviously Apple stock is unlikely to fall off a cliff based on this news.

The fact of the matter is that investors have ALREADY priced any uncertainty over Steve Jobs future health into the price of the stock. And despite AAPL's run up in price over the past year, it still remains a relative laggard to the rest of the S&P when taking into account its growth in income.

Apple announces its 4th quarter sales and earnings tomorrow. Based on (very) incomplete information (like the fact that iTunes download times got very slow in the days after Christmas, etc. etc.) - I'd look for some stellar numbers.

Longer terms: Its hard to predict where Apple will be ten, or even five years from now. There's little doubt that Jobs' vision has been a key part of Apple's tremendous success. Whether the company can keep it up without him, or with a much reduced presence, is hard to tell. But Apple, as a company, has surely absorbed a tremendous amount of "cultural DNA" from his presence.

Yes, I'm sure the Apple board of directors can't wait to get rid of Steve. "Our company (written off for dead 15 years ago) has the second-highest market cap in the world, is insanely profitable and keeps going from strength to strength? Bah! Who cares? The iPhone doesn't have a dedicated gaming interface!!"

Whatever it is you're smoking, you should tip your supplier. That's some good stuff.

You're probably right, but never underestimate the power of a boardroom full of colossal egos to convince themselves that they're the *real* reason for the company's success, and they'd be even richer if it weren't for that *other* guy with a colossal ego.

As of right now (11.10 Central) Apple stock is actually up almost $3 per share - despite the news of Mr Jobs leave of absence being public for three hours or more. So, obviously Apple stock is unlikely to fall off a cliff based on this news.

You're looking at Friday's price: The US Stock Market is closed today for the RDMKLJ holiday.

I sure as heck would not want to own AAPL stock. Look how the company did when steve was kicked out.

I dunno, I'm still kinda dissapointed that I sold half of my AAPL stock once I hit 100% gain on it.As of last week, it's gone up another 63% since then.

you could have gone long some calls after selling your position if you wanted to hedge against missing a further upside run

but it is never wrong to take profits, 100% gain is a nice profit. Better to sell with a 100% gain than get greedy and end up losing all your gains. Look at all the dotcom fools who never sold and went down with the ship instead of taking profits.

I've never been a fan of Apple products and Steve Jobs but there's no denying the man is single-handedly responsible for revolutionizing the personal computer, portable media player, content distribution, mobile phone, and tablet computer markets. Jobs tactfully negotiated deals that would allow the beginnings of transformation in each one of those markets (okay, the early days of the personal computer may have been a little botched but he's had a pretty good track record since.)

While the devices I own may not be Apple-branded, they're all influenced very much by Steve Jobs as he forces his competitors to step-up their game and produce quality products. Would Android or WP7 exist, at least in its current form had it not been for Steve Jobs and the IPhone?

I hope he has a speedy recovery from whatever it is that ails him as the world of consumer electronics and technology would be a much less innovative place without him!

Sometimes I wonder: where do people like you live, under which rock or just how young you have to be to make such an embarrassingly clueless public statement, without recognizing it...?

Interesting. It's pretty clear Apple is near the end of the Jobs era. I guess we'll see how much of their success is due solely to his leadership. I give them a 20% chance of staying relevant ten years after he is gone.

I've never been a fan of Apple products and Steve Jobs but there's no denying the man is single-handedly responsible for revolutionizing the personal computer, portable media player, content distribution, mobile phone, and tablet computer markets. Jobs tactfully negotiated deals that would allow the beginnings of transformation in each one of those markets (okay, the early days of the personal computer may have been a little botched but he's had a pretty good track record since.)

While the devices I own may not be Apple-branded, they're all influenced very much by Steve Jobs as he forces his competitors to step-up their game and produce quality products. Would Android or WP7 exist, at least in its current form had it not been for Steve Jobs and the IPhone?

I hope he has a speedy recovery from whatever it is that ails him as the world of consumer electronics and technology would be a much less innovative place without him!

Sometimes I wonder: where do people like you live, under which rock or just how young you have to be to make such an embarrassingly clueless public statement, without recognizing it...?

That's all we need here: whining from you. Why do you even bother reading Applr-related news, simce the subject-matter is so repulsive to you? Or is it that you are overjoyed bwcause Jobs has medical-problems?

And what exactly "clueless" about his statement? Fact is that (for example) before iPhone, Android looked like glorified Blackberry. Soon after iPhone was introduced, the form-factor was totally different.

You're probably right, but never underestimate the power of a boardroom full of colossal egos to convince themselves that they're the *real* reason for the company's success, and they'd be even richer if it weren't for that *other* guy with a colossal ego.

Agreed, but nobody's *that* stupid. I think Apple learned its lesson after the first time Jobs was ousted.

szlevi wrote:

Sometimes I wonder: where do people like you live, under which rock or just how young you have to be to make such an embarrassingly clueless public statement, without recognizing it...?

Somebody should be embarrassed here, but it's not the poster you were replying to.

Love 'em or hate 'em, you really do have to be living under a rock not to acknowledge Apple's influence on other companies and products.

There are thousands of cute little ideas out in the world that Apple didn't invent (PC, mouse, MP3 player, smart phone). What Apple does best is to foresee which of these can be the next billion-dollar market and take the idea from half-assed invention to a real amazing product that sells like umbrellas in a downpour.

The question for Apple without Jobs is do they have the vision to find and create the Next Big Thing?

Interesting. It's pretty clear Apple is near the end of the Jobs era. I guess we'll see how much of their success is due solely to his leadership. I give them a 20% chance of staying relevant ten years after he is gone.

I don't agree, the ball is already rolling. If this happened 5-6 years ago I would tend to agree, but not now. There is not another company that knows how to turn computer based products into consumer based products like Apple. This was the secret to Steve's success, and now that they have become so entrenched in these markets, its going to be hard for anyone to push Apple off its pedestal.(with or without steve)

Will they dominant their respective markets for years to come? I doubt it.. But I would not be surprised if they retained their high profit niche markets in which they don't need a large market share to be successful.

I'm not even really an Apple fan, but the shift to consumer centric devices is happening whether we like it or not, and until other companies change, Apple is going to be on the forefront of this shift.

I believe in the coming years there is going to be an ever expanding rift between the consumer space on the business space, and as a result, like them or not, I don't see Apple going away anytime soon.

Its hard not to associate Apple's rise with Steve Jobs. Regardless of whatever other causes, he is the face of Apple. Dangerous waters ahead for that company.

No one doubts this. The question is whether or not Jobs did a good enough job to instill his process and ethic in the company. Jobs is given all kinds of labels like "visionary", "forward thinking", etc but I would be willing to bet when you boil it down it all fits in a fairly direct process that he works by. We love to think of innovation as being akin to mana from god but that just isn't the case. My question is how much of the process that drives Apples innovation is due to is clout and charisma of Jobs? Have any steps been taken to ensure that the process is being driven by other key execs? WHo knows but I'm hopeful the last leave of absence drove apple to create the Steve way sans Steve.

My guess is that Apple with have at least 5+ years of innovation unless a new CEO screws it up.

I've worked around innovative companies and those who are coasting. Innovative companies have a specific culture and underlying processes to drive innovation. While Jobs deserves almost all the credit for turning Apple around, their company culture and process will drive innovation forward with or without Jobs.

Probably one of the best examples of culture and process is Pixar. Somewhere there is a documentary that gives an in depth looks at how Pixar as a company works. If you pay attention to the details of this documentary you will notice that the company fosters creativity and project ownership by individuals. They do this with an underlying strict process of movie development that has been immensely successful. I know Jobs had a role in Pixar, but it is not led by Jobs and Pixar is very successful. This sort of creative process is very easy to transplant to any company that is willing.

Mostly is is political battles and fiefdoms that kill innovation. Microsoft is a perfect example of how to kill creativity. The MS of today is nowhere near the creative an innovative company it was 10 years ago. A lot of this stems from a lack of project ownership (by individuals and managers) and competition between individual fiefdoms within the company.

My sense is that Apple has been preparing to transition to the post-Jobs era for quite some while. First of all, the company has grown so massively over the past few years, that he has had to delegate a lot of authority to trusted figures like Cook, Ive, etc. The fact that rumours of upcoming Apple products have become so accurate in recent times is because the scale of the business and manufacturing footprint has become too big to hide what you're doing the way they were able to in the past. It's hard to hide an order for tens of millions of iPad 2s.

Also, just the fact that Jobs' health has been poor, with occasional absence like this one, means that the management team is getting "test runs" of running things without him. So the company and its directors are able to use these moments to get a feel for how their post-Jobs situation is working and make adjustments. Not many CEO successions have the opportunity for test runs like that.

Its hard not to associate Apple's rise with Steve Jobs. Regardless of whatever other causes, he is the face of Apple. Dangerous waters ahead for that company.

No one doubts this. The question is whether or not Jobs did a good enough job to instill his process and ethic in the company. Jobs is given all kinds of labels like "visionary", "forward thinking", etc but I would be willing to bet when you boil it down it all fits in a fairly direct process that he works by. We love to think of innovation as being akin to mana from god but that just isn't the case. My question is how much of the process that drives Apples innovation is due to is clout and charisma of Jobs? Have any steps been taken to ensure that the process is being driven by other key execs? WHo knows but I'm hopeful the last leave of absence drove apple to create the Steve way sans Steve.

My guess is that Apple with have at least 5+ years of innovation unless a new CEO screws it up.

I've worked around innovative companies and those who are coasting. Innovative companies have a specific culture and underlying processes to drive innovation. While Jobs deserves almost all the credit for turning Apple around, their company culture and process will drive innovation forward with or without Jobs.

Probably one of the best examples of culture and process is Pixar. Somewhere there is a documentary that gives an in depth looks at how Pixar as a company works. If you pay attention to the details of this documentary you will notice that the company fosters creativity and project ownership by individuals. They do this with an underlying strict process of movie development that has been immensely successful. I know Jobs had a role in Pixar, but it is not led by Jobs and Pixar is very successful. This sort of creative process is very easy to transplant to any company that is willing.

Mostly is is political battles and fiefdoms that kill innovation. Microsoft is a perfect example of how to kill creativity. The MS of today is nowhere near the creative an innovative company it was 10 years ago. A lot of this stems from a lack of project ownership (by individuals and managers) and competition between individual fiefdoms within the company.

You're exactly right. Their stock price is very, very heavily influenced by what people believe their future performance looks like. Their P/E ratio being so high indicates that investors are betting heavily that the company will continue to improve its performance in the future. I think that if Mr. Jobs left, investors would lose confidence in the company's future earnings potential and the stock's P/E ratio would fall (by way of a falling stock price).

P/E ratio quickly dropped at the beginning of 2008, when the market realized:a) that you couldn't expect a new product with iPhone-level disruptiveness every year (see how tepid was iPad reception, even if it proved a hit very soon, simply because it wasn't seen as disruptive as the iPhone)b) that Jobs was mortal(ok then maybe the market did act on completely different motives but the picture is plausible)

Whatever the market expectations are, anyway, IMHO Apple is perfectly capable of successfully executing the strategy they've laid out for the next 5+ years with or without Jobs.

Going further in the future, don't think you can expect to forecast market evolution seriously - it becomes a sort of business science-fiction, the uncertainity on Apple's CEO fades in a larger pool of unknown variables, you draw arbitrary evolutions of the status quo, and that don't even take into account all the things that you can't imagine right now.Hell we even couldn't tell if 10+ years from now we all won't be warring for clean water and fuel instead of twittering and shopping for gadgets. =P Well, even if the global market evolves unscathed, it is unknown territory for Apple, Jobs or not Jobs.There's too many things possibly going on, just think about the relevance shift from US to BRIC countries, new HCI paradigms, some sort of web "3.0"...

We all praise Apple for moving fast and opening new markets, but they still are a big incumbent - in the field of GUI computing, as we know it. The iPhone and iPad are just a rehash of the original Mac philosophy in the end.Like all things, probably the time will come when the incumbent will be displaced by something new it couldn't think of. When Apple was still quite young, Jobs famously shouted at a dinner with IT CEO's - "Nobody over 30 can possibly understand what computing is all about". It can be that some time in the future someone will shout that to Jobs too.